Meet Me Monday: Air Force veteran molds’ his career at West Pharmaceutical

Sunday

Nov 10, 2013 at 12:01 AMNov 10, 2013 at 7:43 PM

Brown applies lessons learned in the military to civilian life

Noah Clark / Staff Writer

Jerry Brown’s desire was to have a military career, but when his time in the U.S. Air Force was cut short, Brown took the skills he learned and applied them at West Pharmaceutical.

Brown served from 2002-2013, building munitions for aircraft. In 2011, he said he was placed on medical retirement after suffering several seizures. In July, he was medically discharged.

For Brown, military service runs in the family, with his father and both grandfathers spending time in the armed forces. He said it was one of the reasons he decided to join.

He said he picked the Air Force because it was family-friendly and gave him the opportunity to received advanced technical training.

He said he loved his time in the military and wishes he was still serving.

“I miss it,” he said “The original plan was to do 20 years, and if I could be back in, I would do it in a heartbeat.”

Brown said he was deployed three times during his tenure; once in 2003 at the beginning of Operation Iraqi Freedom and to Afghanistan in 2008 and 2009. He said he spent five months away from home each time and enjoyed his time on deployment.

“We got to do our job for real,” he said. “When we were stateside, we helped out the pilots, but the munitions we built were not real. When you are deployed, it’s the real deal.”

Brown said he helped construct a wide range of munitions.

“We were building munitions for whatever mission was at hand,” he said “From the 20 mm, which is the gun in the plane, all the way up to 2,000-pound large explosives.”

Brown said he was stationed at Seymour Johnson Air Force Base in Goldsboro when he was placed on medical retirement. After spending time working retail, Brown landed a job as cell technician, assisting in the manufacture of syringe plungers, at West Pharmaceutical.

Brown said he has been able to utilize skills he acquired in the military.

“In the military, everything was attention to detail,” he said. “Everything was backed with paperwork and if you built something you had to have a document for it. How it translated here was you also have to do paperwork, and every station has directions with how to do it and specifications.”

Keith Montgomery, human resources manager at West Pharmaceutical, said veterans are a huge asset to his workforce.

“We are very proceduralized,” he said “We need people to follow our instructions, because if they deviate from our instructions, patients can get sick and/or die. So for us, military folks understand discipline and how to understand orders and carry things out. We find that veterans make our jobs a little bit easier.”

Montgomery said Brown has been a valuable asset since joining West in 2012.

“I think he’s been a valuable member of the team,” he said, “and I could see him growing with our organization and making our organization better.”

Noah Clark can be reached at 252-559-1073 or Noah.Clark@Kinston.com. Follow him on Twitter @nclark763.